Max Collins - Mourn The Living

“Your daddy?”

“Yeah, didn’t I mention that? My daddy’s name is Gordon, Mr. Webb. One-Thumb Gordon, as his business associates would call him.”

“Christ.” That was all he needed. Gordon was Charlie’s left hand, missing thumb or not.

“Something wrong?”

“You and your father close?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, “just like this.” She crossed her first and middle finger. “This is me,” first finger, “and this is him,” middle finger. She laughed. “Daddy’s a bastard, too, just like Elliot.”

Nolan patted her thigh again. “We’re going to get along fine, Lyn.”

She smiled and bobbed her head. Her eyes went wide as he withdrew the .38 from under his arm. “Ditch the car here if you have to go for help,” he said. “I saw a phone booth on the other side of the park.”

She nodded again and he left her there.

He walked along the sidewalk at a normal rate, passing two other homes, a red brick two-story and a grey stucco, before he reached the would-be Tara, which sat way back in a huge lawn, back at least fifty yards from the street and bordered on both sides by eight-foot hedges. Elliot’s place was isolated, a virtual island. The Navy Band could play in the living room and the neighbors wouldn’t hear a thing.

Nolan crept along the edge of the high shrubbery. He reached the house and eased along the white walls, looking into each darkened window and finding no signs of life in the house. Past two pillars, past the porch, past two more pillars and on to another row of blackened windows. Finally, when he reached the last window he found that it had been covered with black drapes so that the room would appear dark from the street.

Elliot’s den.

The grass rustled behind him; Nolan whirled and swung his .38 like a battle-axe and clipped the guy on the side of the head. He went down like wet cement. He was dressed in a chauffeur’s cap and get-up but he looked like a gone-to-seed hood, which upon closer examination was what he proved to be. A major league gunman Nolan had known long ago in Chicago, a gun grown soft and sent out to the minors. Nolan found a house key in the jacket of the chauffeur’s uniform.

He walked to the big brass-knockered door, slipped the key in the lock and turned it. He pushed gently and the door yawned open.

He was in a vestibule, a fancy one, for though it was dark, when he leaned against the wall he felt the rich texture of brocade wallpaper. Ahead a few steps he could see light pouring out from under a door. Silently Nolan went to it and ran a hand over the surface. Plywood with a nice veneer, but plywood. Something a man could put his foot through.

He slammed his heel into it and it sprang open like a berserk jack-in-the-box and Nolan dove in, clutching the .38. Immediately he saw a black leather chair and went for cover. But there was no gunfire to greet him, or even an exclamation of surprise.

When Nolan looked out from behind the chair he saw a thin, very pale man in horn-rimmed glasses. The man was standing over a suitcase on a table by the wall, transferring stacks of money from a safe into the suitcase. There was a .38 Smith & Wesson, a twin to Nolan’s, on the floor next to the man. The man eyed the gun, his trembling hand extended in mid-air wondering whether or not to try for it.

“No,” said Nolan. “Don’t even think about it.”

The man heaved a defiant sigh and straightened out his blue double-breasted sportscoat from under which peeked an apple-red turtleneck, brushed off his lighter blue slacks. He appeared to be a usually cool-headed type who’d recently lost his cool head. And he was trying to get it back, without much luck.

“Elliot,” Nolan said.

“Mr. Webb,” he replied. The voice was nervous, even cracking into higher pitch once, but it was the voice of a man determined to regain his dignity.

“I’m not much for talking,” Nolan said. “Suppose you just keep packing that suitcase with your money and then hand it over to me.”

“And after that you’ll kill me?”

Nolan shrugged.

“You don’t have a chance, Webb. Webb! That’s a laugh. You’re Nolan, I know you’re Nolan, you think the Boys haven’t circulated your picture?”

“Pack the fucking suitcase and maybe later we’ll have time for an autograph.”

Elliot managed a smile, a smile that seemed surprisingly confident. The pieces of his composure were gradually falling back into place. “Your chances of survival, Mr. Nolan, are somewhat limited. You see, it dawned on me this afternoon just who you really were. I wasn’t positive, of course, not having seen you, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I called Charlie Franco personally. At this very moment—”

Nolan’s harsh laugh cut him off like an unpaid light bill. “Who did you call after Charlie? J. Edgar Hoover?”

Elliot’s face twitched.

“I got you figured down the line, Elliot. The double-cross you been working on the Boys is going to put you on their shit list, too — right next to me.”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Okay, Elliot, cut the talk. Back to the money.” Nolan gestured with the .38.

Elliot returned to the safe and kept on piling stack after stack of bills into the suitcase. Nolan lit a smoke and sat in the black leather chair.

A few minutes had passed when Elliot looked up from his money stacking and said, “Want to tell me how you got it figured?”

Nolan lifted his shoulders. “The way I see it, you took on this piddling operation for the Boys because at the time you had nothing better to do. If you were already working for the Boys, you might not’ve had a choice. The job was meant to make George Franco look and feel like a part of the organization. To help save face for the Franco name. And as time went on, you got bored with it, figured a way to make some easy money and retire to a life of luxury.”

Nolan leaned forward in the chair, casually keeping the .38 leveled at Elliot. “The Chelsey operation was pulling in pretty good money, for what it was. Money made mostly off college kid pleasures, booze and pep pills and some LSD for the supposed hippies. Bagmen from Chicago came in every six weeks and picked up the profits. Around thirty G, I suppose, for each six week period.”

“More like twenty G,” Elliot corrected.

“Okay.” Nolan’s information on that point had come from the initial talk with Sid Tisor, so it figured the take was only twenty G per six weeks. That damn Sid always did exaggerate.

“The thing is,” Nolan continued, “you had a prime connection. A musical junkie named Broome who could get the stuff for you. So you decided to break in an extra source of personal revenue — hard narcotics — without telling the Boys about it.”

Elliot had the suitcase full now and he closed the lid. “All right, Nolan. I’ve been directing a little traffic in drugs. You blame me? I was getting table scraps off this set-up. They paid my bills, sure set me up good with this house and everything. But my cut of the ‘piddling’ action was puny.”

“No wonder you got greedy. You make good money from the Chelsey narcotics trade?”

“What do you think? I’ve been supplying dealers from cities in three states. There’s enough profit to go around, Nolan. You could have a nice cut, too.”

Nolan nodded. “One hundred percent is a nice cut.”

“Don’t be a glutton about it. This isn’t the Boys’ money, it’s mine! Your grievance is with the Boys, not with Irwin Elliot! I’m like you, Nolan, out to take the Boys for a ride.”

Nolan shook his head no. “Forget it. You’re part of the Boys. Maybe you’re worse.”

“We could be partners...”

“Hey, I put nothing past you, not after you wasted your three partners tonight.”